UKH

Back in July I wrote a brief note here about The Old Stalker's house at Luibeilt which is situated on the Glen Nevis watershed. I returned in late August for a sixth time since my first stay there in February 1973. Quite a number of folk posted their own experiences, with many requesting details of my own experiences. The story is told tomorrow on the BBC programme " Uncanny " which is aired on Radio 4 Christmas Day at 11:30PM. The second part going out same time New Years Day. Part one is available now on BBC Sounds and is titled " Do Not Sleep In This House ". These words and more were written on the ceiling and walls sometime following my stay there in 1973. Clearly others were troubled here too.

Can we have a brief summary? 

No!! Don't spoil it, Phil.

You could just not read the thread? I'd assumed from the title that it would contain the story especially as the op didn't actually share anything the last time.

Amusingly, googling 'haunted lubeilt' yeilds 'did you mean haunted lube' and links to a load of sexual lubricant products.

Read the summary of your experiences on the BBC Scotland website. Unbelievably scary. Looking forward to the radio programmes.

Not for me it doesn’t

clear your browsing history and cookies, quickly…!

😁

listened to part one podcast. Alarming stuff! 

It were probably Klondike Ken on the prowl.

Aye right.  

No, really.

to be honest, just as worryingly, I get “do you mean haunted liability”. Not sure which I’d prefer!

As long as there isn't another board with "libera te tutemet ex inferis" scrawled in blood then I think I'd sleep fine

Looking at it I did actually type lubeilt rather than luibeilt which might explain it. 

Good film, that…

Yes, that’ll do it…

Enjoyed Part 1 Phil. I listened to it on my morning run this morning. Looking forward to hearing Part 2. Is the guy you were with still alive? Are you still in touch with him? Does he ever talk about it? 
Hope you are enjoying Xmas. Will see you down the wall in the New Year. 
Mark 

We've been listening to the Uncanny series  since the start, as part of our getting to sleep routine at night. This episode kept me wide awake, what with the hair on the back of neck standing on end. My other half insisted on listening to it again last night and we both made it through to the end of the episode, equally spooked out (and scoffing at some of the rational explanations.)

Both of us really looking forward to the next installment. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Sounds absolutely terrifying!

Did you listen to the original Battersea Poltergeist two-parter that spawned the current series?

Yes, me too. I'm not sure if this is deliberate to enhance the seemingly supernatural explanations? The scientific, logical side of me screams that such things are impossible in a rational world. Short of a lot of bare faced lying (which seems unlikely) then something very odd is afoot. Is parapsychology a 'serious' study?

I did thanks, the missus is a massive fan of all ghostly literature and related stuff and put me onto it.

Drs. Venkman, Stantz & Spengler would say so. Just don't cross the streams. That would be bad.

Long lost contact I'm afraid Mark

Just listened to Part 1, very interesting, and looking forward to Part 2.

Wow I loved this - creepy and very atmospheric - perfect Christmas viewing if a short film was made?  What has happened to Christmas TV, am I old fashioned to want some Dickens, a ghost story and a recent thriller, especially as the weather is too dreich to do very much outdoors?  Looking forward to listening to part 2.

I watched the latest Gatiss adaptation of MR James (The Mezzotint) on BBC Two on Christmas Eve. It was better than some of the other recent attempts but again went wrong in showing the Bad Thing at the end, when the understated point (and strength) of James is that such things are hinted at but not really shown, and are scarier because of it. Too much Doctor Who influence, I think - the template should surely be the celebrated Miller/Hordern version of Whistle and I'll Come To You from the late 1960s, where the scary flappy thing on the beach is always in the distance and never seen close up. I've found beaches with breakwaters a bit unnerving ever since seeing that - I tend to keep looking behind me, just in case.

That was shown on BBC Four later that same evening. It should be available on iPlayer.

Excellent podcast, cheers for the link. Terrified.

When I was a kid I used to sometimes have to walk past a church at night and it would scare me. I can still see the big, dark tower surrounded by gravestones. My Dad would laughingly tell me that it was the living, not the dead, that I should be worried about. Strangely, two people claim to have 'encountered' him after his death. One is my Mum. She said that she felt the sheets on her bed were lifting when she was lying there one night. The other was a neighbour who was in hospital, quite ill, and said that my Dad had appeared and told him that it wasn't his time yet. Both instances were very soon after his death. There are of course completely rational explanations.

Ah, thanks - I'd missed that it was on. It's been on YouTube for a while, though:

youtube.com/watch?v=mYjtxHHjZ00&

Hordern is fantastic with his mumbling and muttering and general eccentricity - it adds a lot to the overall uneasy feel of the thing. Watching it again just now I find the initial slightly 2001esque scene of the mysterious figure on the beach - just after Hordern finds the whistle - as unsettling as the later flappy thing.

I had a near death experience a few years ago when I was in hospital, my grandmother was approaching me with two men I didn’t recognise and she was discussing something with them. As they approached I heard her saying that it was not yet my time and the two men then agreed and the three of them turned round and walked away. I started to recover just after that.

There's now a written version of the Luibeilt story on the BBC website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-59698147

Stories in which objects get thrown around the room apparently of their own accord are always quite spooky. I've never seen anything like this myself, but I have seen - a story told on here before - a door swing open (twice) and a kettle switch itself on (again twice) in an incident around 40 years ago that certainly scared me. That was in an old house near the docks in Aberdeen and people just a few doors along had multiple stories of objects flying around and I think they eventually moved out because of this. It was in what used to be the red light district - not that it was when I lived there! - and there was a theory at the time that this was somehow relevant.

Insofar as I understand theories about poltergeist activity, one idea is that such things tend to mainly affect young people. I used to know someone who was sure he'd once been pushed downstairs by an unseen hand - and that was when he was in his teens. With that in mind, I wonder if Phil and his friend Jimmy had been say 38 rather than 18 when they turned up at Luibeilt that night in 1973, might they have had a quiet night's sleep?

I listened to the podcast a couple of days ago. It was entertaining, however, a couple of things struck me as inconsistent:

(1) It was mentioned that your various ice tools were being hurled around the room in the dark. It also mentioned that you approached the door clutching an ice axe in response to the footsteps. Where did you locate this axe?

(2) It was mentioned that you tried to light candles, only to have them extinguished and fly across the room... Yet, later on, you approached the door by torchlight if I remember correctly? Why bother with the candles earlier on?

Mark me down as sceptical in the extreme. Ghosts go against all known laws of physics.

How come we never get to hear about poltercows and the like? If humans can return to piss people off, then where are all the ectoplasmic cow pats?... It's all a bit like those people who regress under hypnotism, and invariably seem to have been Cleopatra - or somebody equally epic - in a past life.

. Imagine the response if Paul Mitchell had witnessed a paranormal event  and brought it to our attention instead of investing his time talking about something completely risible and unbelievable such as 5G radiation.

In reply to Shani:

I also had a terrifying night in a bothy in the Cairngorm. No ghosts, ghouls or poltergeists though - just humans on the electric soup

In reply to Shani:

On the programme it was suggested that low temperatures had something to do with it.

Was it Frisian?

In reply to Shani:

I'd be cowering in a corner.

I wondered if 'electric soup' was a euphemism along the lines of 'dancing with lucy' - then I looked it up... 

I have the key to Luibeilt. I stayed in the haunted room in June 1979 (the only remotely habitable one by then). The "Do not sleep in this house" graffiti was still there, plus plenty more. I found the key when I went for a pee in the heather nearby. It still fitted the front door and could turn the lock but the door was broken and jammed open. Had a good night's sleep with no interruptions, paranormal or otherwise.

If it was, you could put a jersey on.

Gosh. On the M R James principle, finding and keeping the key would potentially be a Bad Thing, very much to be avoided. Particularly since you tried it in the lock.

Is it possible, and please let me know if I'm being overly sceptical here, that the story on the Uncanny programme is mostly made up and solely intended as a piece of entertainment?   

I only have one 'bothy experience' - sleeping alone in the house in the old master bedroom, in the original double bed I've slept in countless times, I distinctly felt someone sit down. Hair on end and heart rate went zoom. In the pitch black I reached out to touch. Nothing. Lit a nightlight. Nothing.

I assume it was a hypnogogic sleep-jerk, but not a kind that was familiar to me.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156570494530983&id=710225...

Hi Dave. The ghost didn't seem to mind. Perhaps I should glue it to a trig point somewhere?😁

Thus far. It might be playing the long game...

If it is then it was made up quite a while ago, as I knew the story back in the late 70's. Actually I'm fine with the idea that we sometimes leave traces behind in ways that we don't understand. Plenty of current science would have been viewed as mumbo jumbo only a few decades ago (quantum entanglement anyone?).

Nevis say never, I suppose😁

As does life.

I knew and climbed with Phil in the 70's , I can assure you its not a work of fiction.

Good observations

Matter of interest in your comment about Norrie Muir in the other thread. Was he someone who played lots of practical jokes? I can't find much literature about him?

Fair enough, I didn't know any of the background.

I'd be worried about a bald headed bloke with pins driven into his head turning up at the door and intoning something like “You opened the lock, we came”.

I'd be worried if the key - or the Dumyat kettle for that matter - was inscribed with the words "Quis est iste qui venit".

Hi Ian if you still have the key I would love a photo of it !

Don't forget part two is on New Years Day and available on BBC Sounds now.

Cheers

Phil

Hi Darren

The ice axes weren't moved fortunately. Lot of stuff was and at the second candle that I was holding tightly came to light I could see instantly nobody in the room about to dispatch us, but also the books on the bookshelves being flapped around shelf by shelf towards the the ceiling, with some of the books falling to the floor. On the point of the light source, I have often wondered about that myself. I kept a box of matches in my pocket when I finally fell asleep since the noises upstairs were a considerable worry. But we weren't expecting all hell to break loose in the middle of the night. Also my main torch was one of those dark green army style light with a 90 degree head and a clip. They worked from heavy U2 batteries which didn't last that long, so it was probably used sparingly. My headtorch was really primitive and worked from battery pack with a cable to reach the light. Head torches weren't widely available back then. There is a mention of Norrie Muir somewhere. It is very likely he was on the third trip there in 1975 I just can't remember. We opted to stay at Meanach bothy across the river but we all saw the writing on the wall warning prospective dwellers of impending trouble should the choose to stay the night. Iy would be great to here from Norrie after all these years.

Cheers

Phil

PS Part two is available on BBC Sounds now, going out on Radio 4 11:30 PM New Year's Day

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news; https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/winter_climbing/norrie_muir_rip-703414?

Hi Phil,

Have sent you an email.

Cheers,

Iain

Sorry Dave, no inscription on the key, just lots of rust. Although if you hold it up to the full moon closest to the winter solstice at exactly the right angle......

I once went up a hill (well, searching for an obscure trig point in a field) with a friend who is serious-minded and has a scientific background. It was just after new year and he became really quite anxious/agitated about the sliver of crescent moon that appeared as the afternoon progressed. I can't recall the precise theory, but I think he had to see the first moon of the year through glass - so us being out in a field when the thing appeared wasn't good. He was very definite about this - it quickly became clear that it wasn't something to joke about.

Edit: Have had a quick read of stuff about this and it seems quite common for people to believe it's unlucky to have the first sighting of a moon through glass. That doesn't fit with my memory of the episode with my pal (admittedly 20-odd years ago), so thinking about it some more I reckon he was maybe OK about seeing it from the field but mentioned the glass problem and was serious about this when we tried to pull his leg. Maybe it being the first moon of the year, rather than just any old moon, was a further complication, though. It was an interesting turn of events, anyway - I was brought up by quite a superstitious (and staunch Methodist!) mother but I'd never come across this idea before.

Next episode is out!

Good questions.. (which Phil has answered below).

An important point when discussing the paranormal is that the choice is not ghost or not a ghost; it's not a ghost or complete overturn of Law of Conservation of Energy, Newton's 3rd Law of Motion, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, Law of Causality to name just a few.

So the barrier to acceptance is very high.

my wife wouldn't even have the tape in the house after seeing a bit of it - I had to erase it.

Agreed - but that doesn't really help with incidents that people such as Phil have clearly had happen to them and which have had a lasting effect despite attempts to work out a rational laws-of-physics explanation. There was another thread on this just before Christmas and I mentioned there that I live close to a ruined abbey which is one of the oldest and most significant buildings in the area, and much of the village (including our house) is built on the ancient abbey orchard. I know four people here who have seen what they each described as a monk or a hooded figure (in one case the person saw three together, two adult-size and one child-size).

I know all four people a little and they're not making it up for a laugh, and they only found out about each other's stories by accident as far as I'm aware. They're connected in that they all live here and will know each other in nodding-acquaintance terms, but that's the limit of it. All four sightings seem to have been in the same general time period, roughly 15 years ago. It doesn't get discussed much - I think the people concerned are all a bit embarrassed about having been witness to something-or-other in the strange department - but no one has been able to come up with an explanation that doesn't involve the supernatural/paranormal. Perhaps in a couple of hundred years' time science will have progressed so that things like this do have a rational explanation that isn't at present understood - a bit like how there was a time when electricity wasn't understood, but is now.

Just for fun (long waffly post warning!), physical laws are quite interesting when you get up close and personal with them, e.g.,

Law of Conservation of Energy. In non-classical physics, Heisenberg uncertainty relations allow (demand) violation of Cof E, since E may have no certain value at all for a very small time. (or ‘(delta E x delta t) < h/4pi, etc)

Newton's 3rd Law of Motion, is only formulated for inertial reference frames and point masses and is ‘violated’ by special relativity, general relativity and even in all non-inertial, non-equilibrium systems in Newtonian physics. It also assumes instantaneous action at a distance and conservation of momentum, both of which are Newtonian concepts that modern physics doesn’t include.

2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This only applies to closed systems, so an open system -like a living organism, say, doesn’t subscribe. Whether the universe (ie Everything!) is an open or closed system or not is an open question, but locally there are very few really closed systems. Like most physical ‘laws’ it's a working rule of thumb to predict an outcome to some degree of approximation.

Law of Causality is a biggy. If you subscribe to the Copenhagen formulation of Quantum Mechanics or any of its hundred derivatives, you need to swallow uncaused effects several times a day. Eg the timing of a single nuclear decay has no causal mechanism. Nor does any particular solution to “the measurement problem” in QM, only a statistical distribution.

I’m not having a dig at science, but the history and philosophy of physic laws is packed with limits and qualifications and simplifications that only specialists in each field come up against. The material world isn’t nearly as well understood as many would have us think, and we would need quite a lot more physics to get there. Come to think of it, there isn't even an agreed definition of what it is to be "physical"... (e.g. are Magnetic fields?  Electrons? Any particles at all?  The QM Wave function? Field physics? Gravity? The strong Nuclear force? Beethoven's 9th? Yesterday? imagination?).

So Shakespeare nailed it for me with, "There are (OK, may be) more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

Sorry, used to be a pet subject.

I love the frailty of the human mind and I think the best explanation of the defenders was from a working class 17 year old from Glasgow on 1926:

“It was a windless night and my tent was rigged by candlelight. The eerie hooting of an owl sounded from the gloom and bats fluttered by in mysterious silence. I felt the loneliness of mankind away from the throng, and closed the flaps of my tiny sanctuary, the loneliness and fear, or rather the instinctive wariness which has passed on from primeval man when he battled on equal terms with the inhabitants of the forest – when he first developed a fear of the dark and an imagination, when his mind drew the pictures his eye could not see, and he recognized the superiority of the nocturnal animals who caused him to construct a barricade at the mouth of his cave. I find a pleasure in this defying of instinct, a fascination which leads me farthest from the haunts of men, to the wild woods and glens which are the birthright of all who have not been forced into a state of false security by the stone and cement of civilisation. Tonight high in the wild hills I felt the pleasure, the fearful pleasure of an intruder, so difficult to describe, a pleasure which is one with the frail white walls of my tent and the thin guy ropes which hold me against the elements…”.

People can construct their ghosts but I’ll stick to the rationality of Jock Nimlin.

We’ve also had very strange experiences akin to Phil’s in a house my daughter rented in Ireland whilst working there. These were experienced by a number of different people independently and unknown to each other. My daughter had to move out. Fwiw I don’t believe the entity was a ghost but some sort of evil supernatural being. Whe we helped move her out I discovered correspondence  in the garage with a priest from the owners ( who had moved out in a hurry) trying to arrange an exorcism of the property. As said above, there’s a lot of things we don’t know or understand 

Very much enjoyed part 2 today, thanks Phil!  I hope Danny's exhortation to listeners to go and stay at Luibeilt if they dare doesn't lead to the place getting trashed, fingers x'd. 

Its OK....  The place has already been trashed, long ago.  As for the surrounding environment, I doubt the R4 listeners could compete with the local motorcycle cult.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6326667

Hi Phil,

I'm really enjoying Uncanny and particularly your two episodes. As a child and young man I was a believer in ghosts and the supernatural, especially as my mum claimed to have experienced a poltergeist, but I'm now a skeptic. Since listening to these podcasts I'm hearing bumps and noises everywhere!

I found an interesting webpage about a visit to Luibeilt in 1977 where a group of climbers enter the building and, not until the fire is roaring, discover a sinister character playing with a knife in the room. It turns out later that the person is depressed and contemplating suicide. https://heavywhalley.wordpress.com/2017/11/10/day-west-to-east-9-th-novembe...

Edited for a spelling mistake.